Sequoia National Park

This blogging business is officially stressing me out.  I knew it would.....in a low grade nagging kind of way.  I've allowed myself to get almost a week behind with most of the blame falling on crummy wifi and no time.  Ugh....  Anyway....LAST Saturday we made our way into yet another national park in our usual fashion...with a late start and a stop at the visitor center to get maps and Junior Ranger packets for Libby and Ty and sometimes Ella.  Sequoia was no different.  We had rented a car the night before so that we would have an easier time navigating the steep switchback roads and it definitely helped.  We started up the mountain with a stop at Hospital Rock.  Basically the native Americans(can't remember which tribe) fashioned holes in a giant rock to be used as mortars and pestles to pound and grind acorns into flour.  They would share the flour with other tribes that where running low on food as well.  The kids also spied some pretty cool pictographs and of course they couldn't help but to scamper and climb all over the place.

It took about an hour to make up the mountain road.  Slowly the forest became more dense, the trees got taller and bigger, and the Sequoias began to appear.  We smelled them as soon as we opened the car doors.  They just smell old and you can smell the pine.  They are massive...just enormous.  You really can't comprehend the size of them until they are right in front of you.  The entire forest isn't Sequoias, as I imagined it would be.  They were interspersed with Ponderosa and Sugar Pines and almost no other ground cover.  The Park Service folks burn it off, with what they call prescribed burns, so that the Sequoias don't have to compete with it for nutrients.  There are signs all over the place to remind you to stay on the trail so as not to disturb the soil, exposing the shallow roots of the Sequoias, making them vulnerable.  These beasts are super resilient to fire, fungus, and disease, but not falling over.  The prescribed burns also provide the heat that causes the cones to pop open and release seeds.  Ok enough 4th grade science class....  The park was packed.  Unpleasantly so.  We almost couldn't find a spot to park and they were ticketing cars that were parked in undesignated areas.  The Park Service is very serious about protecting these gentile giants.  In the 70's they started tearing down all that had been built up to support the tourism industry.  There were pictures of hotels, restaurants, cottages...basically an entire town was torn down because they figured out that it was negatively impacting the Sequoias.  The last building was torn down in the late 90's.  All that remains amongst the Sequoias is the museum and the bathrooms.  Ok NOW I'm really done.  Ty and Libby were having a very difficult time staying on the trail.  They were climbing on every giant rock or hollowed out root of a toppled tree that we came across.  This was driving Paul berserk.  As we hiked to Moro Rock, there was nothing really to distract them.  They were no longer impressed by the giant Sequoias and they let it be known.  Three weeks into our trip and the whining was at full throttle.  We got to the base of Moro rock and all you could see was steps...steep steps....350(one way) of them as we found out later.  Our master whiner, Libby,  took on the physical challenge like a champ and hardly complained at all.  Conversely, Ella was in tears as Ty cried, "Who planned this????  I could be home enjoying my life"!!!!!  We made it to the top just fine and the view was lovely, but wasn't worth it according to Ty.  Pics to follow eventually.